This report is of a study of the informal water sector in Luanda in the post-war context. The research was an applied research project with a view to advocacy for improved Government water policy and practice so as to bring it more into line with the needs of poor consumers who fall outside the formal distribution network. The results of the research will inform programme planning and impact assessments for basic services and public health projects of the World Bank, European Union and the Luanda Urban Poverty Programme (LUPP). The research aimed to understand the post-war evolution of the informal water economy (and how it has evolved since Development Workshop research in the 1990s), understand how it is likely to evolve and contribute to the improvement of the supply of water to communities in informal settlements, understand better how institutional capacity can best be developed (especially at the interface between communities and the service providers) and provide lessons and about the sector to promote pro-poor poverty reduction strategies through better services.

To date, there has been no research done on rental housing in Angola and as this report will show, there is no government policy concerning rental housing, nor any legal framework. This report therefore provides a first effort to get an understanding of the magnitude and characteristics of rental housing in Luanda. Being a scoping study, this report will open as many questions as it will answer. While providing some first baseline information, it will indicate where future research should focus and how research results should be used to influence housing policy and housing programs. Given the Government of Angola’s increasing interest and willingness to seriously address the nation’s housing problems, this research comes at an opportune moment and has the potential to make a contribution to planning and implementation by introducing rental housing as an important housing sector.

The urban informal economy is understood normally as economic activities that are socially accepted and are generally for the survival of families though they are fully or partly outside the control of public administration in terms of taxes, legislation and statistics. Much of the information about the numbers of people in the informal economy comes from data collected in the 1990s. It is suspected that the informal economy was growing very rapidly during the 1990s. The comparison between the figures of Adauta (1998) and Assunção (2006) suggests that this was the case. (Adauta is referring to 1995, Assunção is referring to 2000 and 2001.) However the definitions are not exactly the same, and the latest figures are now at least 6 years old (in a period when the country was still at war).
Information about how many people are involved in the informal economy (or dependent on it for their livelihood) can only be obtained by large-scale household employment and income-expenditure surveys. There is a possibility that such a survey will be carried out by INE (the National Statistics’ Institute), with funding from UNICEF and/or the World Bank, within the next year. It will be important to try to ensure that this exercise does provide useful information and that it avoids some of the pitfalls of previous exercises of this type in Angola.

This report is a description of the research carried out by Development Workshop, funded by IDRC, between September 2007 and June 2009. The report accompanies the reports of the three components of the research. During this 27 month period, DW has carried out its proposal to expand and build upon its experience of both sector-specific and broad baseline research to develop a comprehensive and cross-sector integrated study of the Angolan informal economy. Specifically this research programme has aimed to: significantly increase quantitative and qualitative understandings of important sectors of the informal economy; conduct a literature review of all previous research and policy documents on the informal economy in Angola and a selective review of international research relevant to the three themes developed in the current programme; carry out a cross-sector study that documented the strategic relationships, interactions, and inter-dependencies among different sub-sectors of the informal economy; foster knowledge-based approaches to public policy making.

The purpose of the research project is: 1) To investigate the progress with the key post-conflict processes in Angola through reviewing the main literature, interviewing key informants and carrying out local levels studies in four different areas of Angola. 2) To test and adapt systems of information collection for continuously tracking progress in creating a sustainable peace and for monitoring and mapping the risks of renewed conflict. 3) To assess (through local levels studies in four different areas of Angola) the strengths and weaknesses of local organisations and institutions (civil society, local government and traditional/community organisations) and how prepared they are to meet the challenges of the post-conflict transitions and processes. 4) To assess the key challenges and risks to peace through analysing the progress with key post-conflict processes in Angola, analysing the strengths and weaknesses of local organisations and institutions and investigating other possible risks. 5) To disseminate the results of these assessments; to raise public and donor awareness of the challenges of creating a sustainable peace in Angola. and the need to consolidate peace after a cease-fire.